Chapter 3 ,verse 34

"The attraction and aversionWhich are felt for different objectsAre natural.Do not fall under their power.They are obstacles."

Eckhard Tolle:

“What is a negative emotion? An emotion that is toxic to the body and interferes with its balance and harmonious functioning. Fear, anxiety, anger, bearing a grudge, sadness, hatred or intense dislike, jealousy, envy…all these disrupt the energy flow through the body, affect the heart, the immune system, digestion, production of hormones, and so on. Even mainstream medicine, although it knows very little about how the ego operates yet, is beginning to recognize the connection between negative emotional states and disease. An emotion that does harm to the body also infects the people you come into contact with and indirectly, through a chain reaction, countless others you never meet. The generic term for all negative emotions is unhappiness.

Do positive emotions then have the opposite effect on the physical body? Do they strengthen the immune system, invigorate and heal the body? They do indeed, but we need to differentiate between positive emotions that are ego-generated and the deeper emotions that emanate from your natural state of connectedness with Being.

Positive emotions generated by the ego contain within themselves their opposite which can manifest at any moment. For example, what the ego calls love is possessiveness and addictive clinging that can turn into hate in a second. Or, anticipation about an upcoming event, which is the ego’s overvaluation of the future, easily turns into its opposite… letdown or disappointment…when the event is over or doesn’t fulfill the ego’s expectations.

Praise and recognition make you feel alive and happy one day; being criticized or ignored make you dejected and unhappy the next. The pleasure of a wild party turns into bleakness and a hangover the next morning. There is never good without bad, no highs without the lows.

Ego-generated emotions derive from the mind’s identification with external goings-on which are unstable and liable to change at any moment. The deeper emotions are not really emotions at all but states of Being. Emotions exist within the realm of opposites. States of Being can be obscured, but they have no opposites. They emanate from within as the love, joy, and peace that are inherent in your nature.”

Sri Krishna Prem:

"Deeply embedded in the cosmos is the power of attraction and aversion by which all things move and change. From the sub-atomic particles with their positive and negative charges to humans with their likes and dislikes, all are bound by this power within the iron circle of necessity – all, that is, save those who have internally detached from the tentacles of unskillful desire and who act solely in response to the law of their inner unfolding. As long as people do certain acts because they like them and abstain from certain others because they dislike them, so long must they whirl helplessly upon the wheel. But the Atman, the one Self, is forever free in its own Being. Its apparent bondage appears only with the self-identification with its lower vehicles, the windows through which its light is filtered. The higher we climb the ladder of the soul, the more the inherent freedom of the Atman will shine forth, allowing us increasingly to witness nature's unfolding, while continuing to be immersed in it, instead of blindly suffering it."

[May we suffer consciously instead of blindly. Conscious suffering is the essence of compassion.]

Sri Aurobindo:

"We may say that there are two lives we can lead, the life of the desire-soul engrossed in the workings of its active nature, identified with its psychological and physical instruments, limited by them, bound by the personality, and subject to nature. There is also the life of spirit: unlimited and transcendent. Freedom is possible. To win this freedom, we have to live inwardly and be able to hold back the natural running of the senses after external objects. This mastery of the senses, the ability to be content without all that they hanker after, is the first condition of the true soul life; only so can we begin to feel that there is a soul in us which is other than the mutations of the mind in its reception of the touches of outward things, a soul which in its depths goes back to something immutable, tranquil, serene and august, master of itself and unaffected by the eager movements of our external nature.

But this cannot be done so long as we are subject to unskillful desires, the force behind our superficial life, which satisfies itself with the life of the senses. When this propensity is mastered, the tumultuous consequences which are its emotional results will fall into quietude. The joy and grief of possession and loss, success and failure, pleasant and unpleasant touches will pass out of our souls. A calm equality will then be gained."

Paramahansa Yogananda:

"Those who engage in regular Sadhana, but not deeply, will encounter both satisfactory and unsatisfactory experiences. According to their experiences of the moment, they alternate between attraction and aversion to meditation. Spasmodic effort becomes the trend – towards deep meditation after satisfying results, and towards the relaxation of attention when favorable results are not forthcoming. The earnest student does not indulge in these. Ardent consistency is cultivated, regardless of results."

Daniel Clark:

“How do I put this principle into practice? Maybe I can go beyond attraction and aversion by doing nothing? Of course I can't do nothing. I have to do something. Well, what do I do? In fact there's no way for me to know on my own - if I am to embody this verse in my actions. Because whatever I choose is based on my likes and dislikes. It seems I have to go outside myself. Perhaps I can pray to God to tell me what to do. But God may not,or what I think God is telling me may be my own delusion. Therefore I must find teachers I trust and follow their instructions. This method is not without its problems. Butif the teachers are surrendered souls, we can learn the art of surrender from them. In a word, what is necessary is obedience. Shivananda calls it ‘right enquiry.’ But when the teacher answers your enquiry, you must obey. There seems to be no other suitable plan - if we are to renounce our own tastes and distastes. Other paths exist. But this verse does not speak of them.”

[Re: “I have to do something. Well, what do I do? In fact there's no way for me to know on my own - if I am to embody this verse in my actions. Because whatever I choose is based on my likes and dislikes. It seems I have to go outside myself.”